She Sells Seashells On The Seashore

Once collected by the masses, the discovery of a particularly intricate seashell still inspires delight. John Wright uncovers their wonders and many uses

CAN I take this rock/log/seashell/ dead mole home?’ was once a repeated question on family walks and, unless this constituted grand larceny or ecological disaster, the answer was always ‘Yes, but you have to carry the damn thing yourself’.

This not only instilled a useful sense of self-reliance in the young Wrights, but also avoided my carrying 30lb boulders sporting a tiny fossil or my pockets filling with wet and strikingly aromatic seashells.

Children truly love seashells and the finer discoveries of 100 seashore walks live on still in a huge glass jar in our bathroom. Adults, however, take a regrettable ‘seen it all before’ stance and, when one is passed to them by a small hand, merely remark how pretty it is. They have nothing more to say.

It wasn’t always so. Before the First World War, collecting and studying seashells was a pastime for the general public and a vocation for both professional collector and taxonomist. The Channel Islands, for example, were—and still are—excellent hunting grounds for seashells and one conchologist reported seeing 200 people collecting them on the beaches of Herm.